


Alive

by bellabeatrice



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, mentions of drug overdose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-20 23:50:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20684003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellabeatrice/pseuds/bellabeatrice
Summary: It happens like this: Peter falls in love with Harley, then Harley fucking dies.It’s not like Peter meant to fall in love; it’s not like Harley meant to die. These things just happen, like the rising and falling of the tides. Hearts are filled, then broken, then put back together again. Hearts stop beating. The world goes on.





	Alive

It happens like this: Peter falls in love with Harley, then Harley fucking dies.

It’s not like Peter meant to fall in love; it’s not like Harley meant to die. These things just happen, like the rising and falling of the tides. Hearts are filled, then broken, then put back together again. Hearts stop beating. The world goes on.

They meet at a bus station on a rainy November day. There is ice in Peter’s lungs, and while it sounds poetic, he really can’t breathe. The bus is late. The rain keeps coming.

“You’re going to get sick,” someone says. Peter sees alligator boots and worn out jeans and the ice coating his eyelashes. He can’t see much else.

“Too late,” he chokes out. “I think I’m gonna die.”

“That’s not good.”

“No,” Peter agrees. “That’s not very good at all.”

Peter thinks he passes out, or maybe he falls asleep. He wakes in a hospital bed, dry and warm, with a worn leather jacket folded neatly at his feet. He hasn’t owned a jacket in the past seven years. It smells like gasoline and ash. Peter puts it on. It’s too big on him. It’s perfect.

The winter passes in a blur of bus stops, snow storms, and the ever-present smell of gasoline and ash. It’s the warmest winter Peter can remember. Jackets make the world a little more bearable.

When a blizzard blocks all transportation to and from the area for three days, Peter stays with a prophetess.

“Life is a puzzle,” she tells him. Peter chokes down lukewarm coffee. “Yours is missing a piece.”

“Just one?” Peter asks. “I feel like I’ve got holes in me everywhere.

The prophetess peers at him over the rim of her mug. “Sometimes you lose pieces. That’s just the way it is.”

In the pause between rains, Peter finds the missing piece. His name is Harley Keener, and he rides a motorcycle. He has gel-slicked blond hair and blue eyes, and he doesn’t like to be called “baby.” He blushes when Peter called him “princess.”

Peter is kind of in love with him. At least, he thinks he is. He doesn’t really understand what love is.

“Have you ever been in love before?”

“Always,” Harley replies. “I am always in love.”

Peter climbs onto the motorcycle behind Harley, and they take off into the night.

The sun rises behind worn-out clouds. Peter falls into bed with Harley, and they sleep the day away.

Mornings shed light on the dust of their sins. Nighttime sweeps it under the rug. They clandestinely indulge in the nightlife and run away from day.

“Don’t you feel like we’re cheating the system?” Harley asks, pouring syrup on his waffles.

Peter shrugs. “I guess. But rules were made to be broken.”

“Hearts, too.” Harley looks out the window at the lightening sky. “I think my heart is broken.”

“Yeah, mine too.” Peter can’t look away from Harley. He’s not really sure he wants to.

The world flickers to life as the runaway boys flicker out. It’s oppressive, the weight of the world, but they bear it till they reach the bed, where they collapse in each others’ arms.

It’s good in these moments, when the universe is only as big as the blankets around them.

Home isn’t really a place. Peter’s spent his whole life on the run. He’s not really sure what he’s running from anymore. Now, at least, he feels like he’s running to something. Running home.

Running into Harley’s arms.

Running in time to Harley’s heartbeat.

Peter walks with his hand on Harley’s wrist, fingers pressing slightly into the veins. He sleeps with his hand on Harley’s neck, fingers clamping down on the pulse point. Harley lets him.

If Harley is alive, it means Peter is too. That’s just the way the world works.

“If A is equal to B and B is equal to C, then A is equal to C,” Peter declares.

“You’re alive, Peter.” Harley picks up Peter’s band and presses it to his own wrist, letting Peter feel his own pulse for a change.

Peter doesn’t like it. It’s not as steady as Harley’s, not as reassuring. He reaches out to touch Harley’s wrist.

Harley flinches away and slams the door behind him. Peter doesn’t move from the bed. He’s too busy shaking, and he can’t seem to stop.

When Harley comes back, Peter is passed out on the floor, a dozen orange bottles lying empty around him. He wakes up in the hospital again, a leather jacket at the foot of his bed.

“You’re alive,” Harley says. “Stay that way?”

Peter presses shaking fingers to Harley’s wrist. “Okay,” he promises. “I’ll try.”

The world keeps turning. Harley keeps living. Peter keeps trying. The sun rises. The sun sets. Two hearts beat in time, intertwined.

“So this is love?” Peter asks.

For once, Harley is looking at him instead of the horizon. “Yes, Peter. This is love.”

“I think I liked it better when I wasn’t in love with you.”

“Yet here we are.”

“Yet here we are,” Peter concedes. “It’s not so bad.”

Love is a funny thing. It batters and bruises and mends and comforts all at the same time.

Harley tries to teach Peter self-defense. For a week, they spend hours in alleyways beating the shit out of each other. Peter shatters Harley’s nose, and they have to go to the hospital to get it fixed. His nose never looks the same again, but Peter falls in love with the crookedness of it.

Harley tries to teach Peter to drive the motorcycle. For ten minutes, they zip around a mall parking lot screaming at each other. Peter almost shatters Harley’s motorcycle, but he stops just before slamming into the building wall. The lessons stop after that, but Peter falls in love with Harley’s obsession with the bike.

Peter tries to teach Harley how to cook. For a month, they bustle around their tiny kitchenette with a cookbook on the counter, burning countless groceries over and over again. Harley shatters Peter’s favorite plate, the one with spiderwebs painted along the rim, but he glues the pieces back together painstakingly. The plate will never look whole again, but Peter just falls in love with Harley’s craft.

Peter tries to teach Harley how to dance. For a night, they sneak into a small studio and cavort around the room, falling and getting back up again. Harley almost shatters Peter’s heart when he calls ballet stupid after falling down out of a turn, but he gets back up again and keeps trying. Harley might never be good at dancing, but Peter falls in love with him for trying anyway.

Two rules govern Peter’s world. If one of these rules is broken, it means the world is ending Rule number one: the sun rises every day. Rule number two: Harley is alive.

Peter’s world ends on the cusp between Saturday and Sunday. One second, Harley’s heart is beating normally, in time with Peter’s. The next, his heart is beating way too fast. The next, it stops.

Three seconds. That’s how long it takes for a boy to die.

Peter is drunk with grief and slumped against the wall of the church where Harley’s funeral will be held. He hears footsteps, and for a moment, he thinks it’s Harley, coming to save him like he always does.

The girl who approaches looks like Harley, and Peter’s not sure if that’s comforting, scary, or sad.

“You must be Peter,” she says, sliding down the wall to sit next to him. “I’m Abbie, Harley’s sister.”

“I didn’t know he had a sister.”

Abbie grins with all her teeth, and it catches Peter so off guard he flinches. “Harley was trying to run away from his past. He thought that if he kept running, he could outrun his imminent death. Turns out, there’s some things you can’t outrun.”

“If you were his past, what was I? His present? His future?”

Abbie laughs. “You’re his past. He hasn’t got a present or a future no more.”

When Peter looks closely, he can see the hurt in her eyes. That’s why he leans his head against her shoulder. That’s why she wraps her arm around his waist. They don’t go to the funeral. They sit just outside, waiting for the rain.

Peter didn’t understand what Harley meant when he said he was always in love, but years go by, and he’s beginning to understand.

Peter is always in love.

He’s in love with a boy in a casket, a boy who’s nothing more than bones and dust. Has been in love with him for thirteen years.

Thirteen years. 4,748 days. 4,748 sunrises.

Peter knows exactly three things for certain. One: he is alive. Two: Harley Keener is not alive. Three: the sun will rise every morning.

The sun rises, the sun sets. The world goes on.

**Author's Note:**

> Catch me on Tumblr: @parknerplease


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